Meeds given a seat on the House Interior Committee (later the House Natural Resources Committee) soon after arriving in Congress. He took on the oft-thankless task of resolving the state’s great land use battles.

He was instrumental in writing the 1968 North Cascades Act, which created a 694,000-acre national park complex (the North Cascades National Park and the Ross Lake and Lake Chelan National Recreation Areas) as well as a 500,000-acre Pasayten Wilderness Area.

It wasn’t easy. Conservationists built up wide public support in urban areas. The timber industry, then strong in towns bordering the park, mounted parades of honking logging trucks.

The legislation had to be finessed past ornery House Interior Committee chairman Wayne Aspinall, D-Colorado, a satrap of the mining industry.

Meeds was back at it again a few years later, as the House took up the fate of the “land of 600 lakes” between Stevens and Snoqualmie Passes.

The story deserves a bit of telling.

Gov. Dan Evans favored a large Alpine Lakes wilderness, as did most in a crowd of 750 people who showed up for a hearing in Seattle. Fearful of the timber industry, however, Rep. Mike McCormack, D-Wash., tried to excise land included from his Central Washington district. McCormack snubbed conservationist constituents who sought to meet with him.

The timber industry treated the Alpine Lakes as a warmup to the larger upcoming battle over management of the entire national forest system. It fielded pricey lawyer lobbyists, legions of flacks, and an industry-funded “coalition” front group.

It tried to keep the size of the wilderness uder 220,000 acres, and to carve the areas being preserved in two: A logging road would have extended up Icicle Creek and over Van Epps Pass.

Meeds, and top aide Mark Houser, would have none of it. Meeds pushed a 393,000-acre Alpine Lakes Wilderness bill through the Interior Committee on a close vote. Sen. Henry M. Jackson then wisked it through the Senate, even as a lumber union nabob was holding a press conference in Seattle vowing to fight the legislation.

The U.S. Forest Service tried to get President Gerald Ford to veto the legislation.

Gov. Evans carried a large picture book on the Alpine Lakes into the Oval Office, and spent 45 minutes talking about the wonders of the area: Evans talked about taking his three sons over 7,780-foot Aasgard Pass into the Enchantment Lakes, in the teeth of a storm.

Ford signed the bill. Meeds encountered stiff rural resistance in his 1976 reelection race, winning by fewer than 600 votes.

The election showed the relative value of campaign literature. Meeds was actually defeated in those portions of the district where his campaign gave out standard brochures.
But the campaign ran short at the last minute.

In place of brochures, Meeds’ volunteers handed out a “Mary Meeds Chinese Cookbook” — written by the congressman’s Shanghai-born wife — in the pivotal 45th legislative district.

“Landslide Lloyd” carried the 45th by 1,200 votes, and was sent back to finish his productive tenure in Congress.